From Youth to Experience: Vera Brittain’s Work for Peace in Two World Wars
Vera Brittain, pacifist, feminist, novelist and poet, was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England, on 29 December 1893 and grew up in Buxton, Derbyshire. She won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford to study English Literature. Brittain was just about to begin her studies when the First World War was declared. During the same eventful period, carefully documented in her vividly detailed diaries, she met her brother Edward’s closest friend, Roland Leighton. Edward and Roland immediately volunteered for service.